While archaeologists have found numerous coins produced by participants in Simon Bar Kokhba’s revolt against Roman rule in 132 CE, the recent discovery of one in a cave near the city of Modi’in suggests that the revolt was not centered exclusively in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem but instead spread farther than most historians had realized. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

Historians have traditionally held that the revolt had little support among residents who lived north of Jerusalem. This coin, along with recent discoveries of other refugee caves, points to rebel activity in the area. . . . Also found in the cave, located near the Arab village of Qibya, were potsherds and glass shards that have been similarly dated to the revolt.

The Bar Kokhba or Great Revolt, which lasted three and a half years, was the last and arguably greatest of several Jewish uprisings against foreign rulers in ancient times. The rebels prepared well ahead of time, and, according to the 3rd-century historian Dio Cassius, Roman legions were brought from other outposts in the empire to quell it. [He also] writes that some 50 Jewish fortresses and over 1,000 settlements were destroyed, along with hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives lost. . . .

The Bar Kokhba coinage is unique in its widespread systematic recycling of old coins, which were re-stamped, or overstruck, with the Jews’ diecasts. According to the leading numismatist Yaakov Meshorer, . . . the reason was political—for revenge.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.